Category: submissions

Upcoming Themes

While the Lucky Thirteen Newsletter is on hiatus, we will be updating the blog with news instead.

  • On April 1, 2023, Volume 6, Issue No. 2 – FAMILIARS – will go live. We are working through submissions for this issue now.

  • On October 1, 2023, Volume 6, Issue No. 4 – MALICIOUS EDITIONS – will go live. Submissions for this themed issue are currently open and will close on 6/30/2023.

  • On August 1, 2023, submissions will open for Volume 7, Issue No. 2 – MULTIVERSES. CFS: We are looking for fiction, poetry, and nonfiction on the theme of Multiverses. Send us your work with portals, gateways, wormholes, deep space, parallel dimensions, alternate realities, and abysses of time. Submission window for this theme opens 8/1/2023 and closes 12/31/2023.

  • General submissions will be closing June 1, 2023 and will remain closed until August 1, 2023 to allow us to catch up on the queue.
  • Feedback submissions will be reopening in late 2023 to early 2024, or as soon as we are caught up on general submissions. We will post an update when the feedback submission forms are live.

General Submissions Closed Until 6/20/2021

General submissions will be closed from 4/20/2021 through 6/20/2021 in an attempt to allow us to catch up on non-themed submissions. The rate of submissions has outpaced our ability to read them, so until June 20th we will only be accepting themed submissions.

We apologize for the long response times, and hope that this closure will aid us in catching up and reducing our response times. We appreciate your understanding, and thank you for trusting us with your work.

~ Tamara Burross Grisanti, Editor-in-Chief

Submissions opening April 1st, 2021 for “Technophobia”

Announcing the theme for Volume 4, Issue No. 4: “Technophobia.” Give us your hashtag noir, your algorithms gone awry, your disinformation dystopias, your marketing monstrosities. Got a the-universe-is-a neuron-and-we-are-merely-synapses fantasia? Send it. We want your elegiac missives to the maverick bot you Twittercided. We crave your HTML sonnets coded in paranoia. From AI gone rogue, to parallel social media universes, we want your technologies of fear. Submissions opening April 1st, and closing July 4th, 2021. Submit your darkest digital delights!

New Feedback Guidelines & Query Timeframes

From Thursday, January 16, 2020 going forward, we have new guidelines for our feedback option. For flash and poetry, please submit only one piece for critique. This will allow us to continue to do the feedback option, and give more detailed, in-depth critiques to each piece when considered individually as opposed to within a suite of flashes and poems. We will be adding a note to the Submittable forms soon. All feedback submissions received by Wednesday, January 15, 2020 will be reviewed in their entirety, but going forward, if we receive a feedback submission with more than one flash or poem attached, we will critique only the first one. The $10 paid for feedback is not for the length or amount of work submitted, but for the time all three editors invest in critiquing the work. We appreciate your understanding.

We also have a new timeframe for submission turnarounds. Since setting the query mark at eight weeks, our submissions volume has quadrupled. Please allow three months before querying.

— Tamara Burross Grisanti, Editor-in-Chief

New Feedback Option coming 4/1

Starting on April 1, 2019, there will be a new paid feedback option for submitters. Each submitter in this category will receive feedback from three Coffin Bell editors for each piece submitted, whether or not it is chosen for publication.

We have had a lot of requests for feedback, and plan to use the revenue created by this new option to fund the printing and production of our second print anthology, Coffin Bell TWO. We look forward to sharing our feedback with you!